Gabby held there was no tin mined in Singapore. Bukit Timah, Tin Hill did not necessarily mean there was any. Up on the Peninsular it was a different story of course; tin and rubber had built all the colonial bungalows in Malaya proper.
We had planned to scale the peak, all 170m, at a run more or less; two dauntless Aussie explorers, the Angel in the floppy from Central Casting in the interior of the Queensland wastes; author in the far more fetching panama—touch misshapen after three years under tropical sun and rain. We started on the Wallace Trail, cutting a passage through the jungle in the footsteps of the great English Botanist, the confrere of Darwin, who had shot all the game and bird-life of the archipelago for the glory of science and empire. A winding little dirt track that was poorly defined, occasional sign-posts barely legible and tree roots for footing. When the heavens first opened little of the rain got through the dense overhang; different story as we progressed. Utterly drenched and bedraggled in the wash-up, forced to take shelter at a sad educational site that was supposed to show school students here what a dairy approximated. We sat on a bench opposite a large spotted fibre-glass Friesian it might have been, caught in the act of chewing the cud and switching her tail. A dairy hidden in the dales a fair old stretch. God help the poor students!
More authentically, Gabby regaled with tales of bringing the cows home for milking on grandpa's farm. The old man had sadly met his end falling from his sulky when his horse reared at a car-horn behind. Milking the frisky old moos one needed to tie a leg in order to be sure you wouldn't get a hoof in the guts when least expected. Mechanical milking even in the 50s was a surprise. The Angel though knew how to turn a teat in the direction of an unsuspecting by-stander for a little squirt in the eye.
Oi! Give a working-man room here!… Gab was eldest in the family. Two small pimple mounts remained on the island of Singapore. Mount Faber, which this dauntless duo had previously surmounted, at one hundred and ten thousand centimetres; now Tin Hill would remain for a subsequent venture. The twenty percent increase in the land area of Singapore since the time of the British had been achieved by leveling the terrain for the great land reclamation. Made it cheaper to build pigeon holes for the population of the former kampungs. Can-do Singapore. Singapura, City of Lions—tigers properly.
The educational notices plastered on the wall of the exhibit here noted the killing of the last big cat on the island. The task of the school-kids was to try to imagine that. Ah! the perfume within the few hundred metres of the Wallace Trail, the stands of timber, the ferns and foliage that was brought into one's being through the sight of the eyes, the scent of the nostrils and pores of the skin.
With respect, Third World to First in the famed thirty years has come at some cost, Messers Lee pere and fille. (The younger inherited the post of PM from his dad.)
Enviro greening of all future housing was an earnest government project here currently—roof gardens, trailing vines over exterior cladding, water reticulation. Prizes have been awarded in elaborate ceremonies to the local architects by their colleagues.
In that few hundred metres stretch of remnant jungle what would have changed from the time of the great scientist's passage? Not a jot, gentle Reader. Some swifts flitted overhead; none of the Freeway traffic noise was audible. The softness underfoot passed up through the limbs. A mini glory well worth the dousing.
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